National Meat Case Study 2004: Fresh product types and allocation of retail space.

Fresh meat retail cases in 104 supermarkets across 5 regions of the United States were audited for product space allocation, percentage of space allocated to each fresh meat category and frequency of species among all stock keeping units (n = 14,863). The United States was divided into Mountain/Southwest, Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, and West Coast regions. Fresh meat categories for self-service cases included beef muscle cuts, ground beef, pork, veal, lamb, chicken, turkey, fresh sausage, value-added, heat and serve, ham-bone-in, ham-boneless, ham steak, other processed meats, seafood, and nonmeat items. Fresh meat categories for the full-service case included seafood, beef, pork, chicken, and other. Whole muscle beef, pork, and chicken products were available in all stores. Ground beef products and turkey were reported in almost all stores, 94.5 to 100%, respectively. The majority of the self-service meat case was dedicated to beef in all regions except for the Northeast, where chicken occupied the majority of the self-service case. Linear meters of self-service fresh meat case were greatest in the Northeast region, which was similar to Mountain and Midwest regions, but different (P = 0.003) than the Southeast and West Coast regions. However, the West Coast region best utilized the retail meat case by providing consumers with the greatest number of offerings per linear meter. The percentage of stores audited with a full-service meat case was 37.5%, and the percentage with a full-service seafood case was 60.6%. The full-service meat case was the smallest (number of linear meters, P = 0.039) in the Southeast and largest (number of linear meters, P = 0.039) in the Midwest.